Turning Stone field draws 30 of top 100 on PGA Tour money list

Dennis Nett / The Post-Standard, 2009Vaughn Taylor will return to the Turning Stone Resort Championship next week. Last year he finished runner-up to Matt Kuchar after losing a six-hole playoff that ended Monday morning. He is the highest-ranking player on the PGA Tour's money leaders list (36th) in this year's field

For an opposite-field event, next week’s Turning Stone Resort Championship fared about as well as could be expected.

When the registration list closed at 5 p.m. Friday, those entered included only four of the top 50 players on this year’s PGA Tour money leaders list and 30 of the top 100.

That was to be expected as the fourth annual tournament at Atunyote Golf Club in Vernon is sharing the week with a bigger event, the World Golf Championships’ Bridgestone Invitational in Akron. The 80-player Bridgestone field automatically draws the top 50 golfers on the Official World Golf Ranking, winners of various worldwide tournaments, and players on the most recent Ryder and President Cups.

As a result, the player with the highest world ranking visiting Turning Stone will be 41-year-old Hiroyuki Fujita, a nine-time winner on the Japan Tour. He checks in at No. 62, one of seven players within the world’s top 100 scheduled to play in Central New York’s premier golf event. Joining him are Michael Sim (65), David Toms (69), Bryce Molder (72), Rory Sabbatini (75), Brian Davis (76) and Stephen Ames (80).

But the tournament will not be without recognizable players. Vaughn Taylor, who lost in a six-hole playoff to Matt Kuchar last year, will return sporting the highest ranking on this year’s money list, 36th. Veterans of note include Stuart Appleby, Woody Austin, David Duval, Steve Elkington, Brad Faxon, 2007 winner Steve Flesch, Jerry Kelly, Charley Hoffman and Charles Howell III.

Much of the attention, however, may go to two of the four players who received sponsor’s exemptions. Sixty-year-old Ray Halbritter, the tournament’s founder and CEO of Oneida Nation Enterprises, has given himself one of the exemptions and another to Gavin Hall, a 15-year-old from Pittsford and one of the top junior amateur golfers in the nation. Both will be playing in a PGA Tour event for the first time.

Halbritter, who became a PGA of America club professional apprentice within the past year, drew mixed reviews during a Golf Channel panel discussion this week for giving himself an exemption. Two panelists said Halbritter, who pared his handicap down from the 15-16 range to about a 2 in the past decade, should have given the exemption to a PGA Tour player, while one commentator praised him for taking the chance after being the driving force behind landing the tournament.

Hall could become the tournament’s darling. The rising sophomore at Mendon High School has not only won back-to-back New York State Junior Boys Amateur titles, he also recently walloped a field of elite adult players by 18 strokes — again, 18 strokes — at Oak Hill’s challenging West Course to win his second Rochester District Golf Association Championship. He also recently qualified for this year’s U.S. Amateur with a medalist score in a local qualifier and made it to the quarterfinals of the U.S. Junior Amateur.

A good showing at Turning Stone could draw as much national media attention to the event as Jordan Spieth did earlier this year at the HP Byron Nelson Championship. In that PGA Tour event, Spieth finished tied for 16th with a 4-under 276 total.

Turning Stone’s week begins with practice rounds Monday through Wednesday followed by tournament rounds Thursday through Sunday. The players will be competing for a $4 million purse, including $720,000 to the winner.